Xanny t1_iu1bje7 wrote on October 27, 2022 at 8:34 PM

Reply to comment by todareistobmore in Envisioned refurbished harbor (circa 1950’s, via City Archives) by Reeyuuk

The charm pass works fine, just flash the driver the little screen animation thing, my problem with it is the fare structure sucks in that if you take a bus somewhere and back you are just stuck doing a full day pass no matter what. The $2 passes should be for like 4 hours of transit so that most trips are included in that pass rather than the like 15 or 30 minutes it currently is.

todareistobmore t1_iu1g822 wrote on October 27, 2022 at 9:04 PM

I'm not sure any transit system works like that--usually transfers are for a limited time window and can't be used on the same route specifically to avoid people using them for round trips. IMO as far as overall fare things to adopt, I wish more American cities would do like London where if you pay per ride up to the level of a particular day/week pass, it just converts you to that.

But as for paying fare itself, I more mean that our MTA welcomes too much delay at the farebox. A $1.90 fare absolutely encourages people to turn out their pockets to make exact change, and refilling CharmCards on the bus was slow and error-prone (but also necessary bc we don't have much other transit). It's just such a stupid self-own not to prioritize getting passengers to board/deboard as quickly as possible.

Xanny t1_iu1o7xt wrote on October 27, 2022 at 9:59 PM

Eliminating fares is definitely a huge benefit to specifically bus systems because it makes stops way more efficient. But I get the antagonistic relationship between MDoT and Bmore means that the state will never just give the city free busses.

One idea I've been floating is that the city should give residents 3, 5, or 7 free day charm passes a month. I'd want them to just load them on the app but way too many people don't have phones or cell service (something else the city could do, municipal cell service and a phone recycling program to give people that need phones phones) but in the meantime they could just load them on the app for residents that have phones and anyone else can get the pass in the mail. Maybe give out 7 days paper and 8 on the app to try to promote its use a bit, but still give everyone at least a week of free transit.

DC is floating the same kind of policy with $100 a month allowance per city resident in Metro, and this would be a lot less per person, but I think it would still get more people using transit and might get more pressure to improve it if people in Fells and Fed Hill were on it more often.